


you always insist it can't get better than this (but you've never had a midnight kiss)

by wingsoutforshin (7daysoftorture)



Category: Dr. STONE (Anime), Dr. STONE (Manga)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, Getting Together, Guilt, I love Tsukasa, M/M, Misunderstandings, but it's not that angsty really, spoilers until at least chapter 141
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23504860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7daysoftorture/pseuds/wingsoutforshin
Summary: "The reality is this: Senku can’t read his thoughts. All he has are Tsukasa’s words and those have proven to be unreliable before.He dug his own grave. Regardless of how painful it is, he must lie in it."----A misunderstanding causes Tsukasa to doubt his place in the Kingdom of Science.
Relationships: Ishigami Senkuu/Shishiou Tsukasa
Comments: 14
Kudos: 159





	you always insist it can't get better than this (but you've never had a midnight kiss)

It’s a few hours past sunrise when Tsukasa finally finds Senku in the lab section of the ship, eyes intent on a beaker holding a liquid he can’t name from sight alone. He’d woken to the sound of Ryusui walking around the common room looking for Senku, and had offered to go look for him himself since he was up and had nothing better to do on such a big ship. He hadn’t thought it would take so long to find him, but leave it to Senku to be as elusive as possible even inside a ship half the size of their usual territory.

He watches as Senku sighs, most likely bored of waiting for whatever reaction this newest experiment is supposed to show, and moves closer, curious. Only when Senku twitches in his seat and turns wide eyes on him does he realize he didn’t think to make noise when walking in, and that his approach must have startled the other. He expects Senku to relax at the realization that he’s the one there, but instead his whole body goes rigid and he visibly forces a breath out of his mouth, hands fisted in the fabric of his clothes.

Tsukasa’s eyes fall on his exposed neck and his lungs suddenly feel too full behind his ribcage.

_Oh._

“Sorry,” he says, and steps back. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t,” Senku replies, mouth twisting into a half-formed frown. His voice sounds deceptively calm despite how untruthful his words ring in Tsukasa’s ears. “I just didn’t expect anyone to come by, is all.” He turns his eyes back on the beaker and angles his body forward, as if trying to hide it from view.

“Ryusui is looking for you,” Tsukasa explains, rubbing his fingers over the palm of his right hand, the skin there unbearably hot and stinging. There’s no exposed wound, he knows - only the phantom pain of his own sins. “It must be important, he looked a little agitated.”

Senku snorts, waving a dismissive hand over his shoulder. “Your definition of agitated and his definition of agitated are _not_ the same.”

“Maybe,” Tsukasa admits, tilting his head to the side even though Senku isn’t looking his way. “But he said he needed your help with something.”

Senku looks at him, eyes narrowed. “Fine,” he says, sounding mildly put-upon. He runs a hand through his hair and gets up from his seat. “I was getting bored anyway.” 

His body is once again positioned in a way that hides the beaker from view, and it only serves to confirm Tsukasa’s suspicions. Senku doesn’t want him to know what he’s doing.

But of course, what did he expect - that he’d be invited into the fold of things without so much as a slap on the wrist? After everything he’d done? Every action has consequences, even in this new stone world. Tsukasa destroyed the foundations of their relationship by breaking the first promise he ever made to Senku, so there’s no reason for him to trust him now. Nevermind that Tsukasa wouldn’t dream of hurting him ever again - not now that he has his sister back, not now that he’s finally realized how unbelievably special Senku is, even without all his science. 

The reality is this: Senku can’t read his thoughts. All he has are Tsukasa’s words and those have proven to be unreliable before. 

He dug his own grave. Regardless of how painful it is, he must lie in it.

\------

  
  


“Tsukasa-kun, have you seen Senku-kun?” 

Tsukasa opens his eyes to see Yuzuriha standing over him, a bundle of fabrics in her arms and a soft smile on her face. 

“He’s been spending a lot of time in the lab room, maybe you should check there,” he says, shifting into a more upright position. He’d been basking in the sun for the past ten minutes, enjoying the sea breeze and the calming sound of the waves hitting the ship’s hull. If Senku passed by him in that time, Tsukasa didn’t recognize the sound of his footsteps as belonging to him.

“Ah, then he must be busy with something.” She drops the fabrics by his feet and gently sits down next to him. “I passed by Chrome-kun on my way out and he was heading that way, so maybe they’re working on something together.”

“Does Senku not tell you about these things?” Tsukasa asks, surprised at her lack of knowledge. He’d assumed her being part of the first trio would make her privy to everything happening with the crew. 

She laughs. “It’s not that he’s hiding it from me or anything like that. He just doesn’t think to tell people about that sort of stuff unless he needs their help or he’s done with whatever it is and wants to show everyone.” She shrugs, picking at one of the pieces of cloth with careful fingers. “It’s nice, actually, that he’s found people that share his passion for science. Taiju-kun and I used to try our best to help out, but there was only so much we could do when we weren’t as involved or as interested in it as he was.”

“I see.”

It’s strange hearing Yuzuriha speak of Senku in such a fond nostalgic way - strange to remember that she’s one of the only two people here who knew him before the petrification happened. He wonders what it was like, having such an electrifying presence in their daily monotonous life. He distantly wishes, in vain, that he’d had the chance to find out himself.

“I’m sorry,” she says sheepishly, “I’m here talking about things you didn’t even ask me about-”

“No, it’s fine,” he says, shaking his head. “I like...hearing about what it was like for everyone, before.”

She visibly hesitates, “Senku told me,” looks down at her hands, “about you, I mean.”

“Ah.”

“Mirai-chan is a very sweet girl, always helpful and kind. I’m glad that despite everything that day took away from us, it could at least give her back to you.”

He feels his heart squeeze in his chest and tastes something bittersweet on his tongue at the piece of kindness he feels undeserving of. “Senku is the one who did that.”

She turns surprised eyes on him. “Oh,” she says, and after a moment in which they silently stare at each other, her gaze softens and she smiles. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.” 

They sit together for a few minutes longer, before she remembers what she’d set out to do and starts collecting all her little pieces of clothing back into her arms in a clumsy sort of rush. As Tsukasa watches her small delicate fingers, full of sewing calluses and blisters, he thinks of a piece of jagged rock against a pale neck, and regrets with a fierceness he didn’t think himself capable of. 

Hindsight is a terrible thing.

\----

“The fishy air gets old pretty fast,” Gen is saying, leaning on the railing of the ship and wrinkling his nose at the air coming up from the sea. 

“We’ve dealt with worse smells,” Ukyo says. 

“Yeah, that oil smelled awful,” Gen agrees, before turning to look up at Tsukasa with a careful look in his eyes. “Tsukasa-chan, what would you say was the worst thing you smelled since you were first unpetrified?”

“I don’t know,” Tsukasa says, looking out at the horizon so he doesn’t have to look at Gen. “That’s a hard choice to make. Everything smells different nowadays. And yet, so many things smell the same.”

“Ah~ so philosophical!” Gen laughs, and Tsukasa turns in time to see Ukyo crack a smile as well.

“How about this, then. What’s the best scent you’ve smelled since you were unpetrified?”

Tsukasa thinks of the warm familiar scent of his sister, of the strangely comforting smell of chemicals that always follows Senku around, of the scent of crushed stone and fried fish and ice and frost and _cold_.

“There were these flowers that grew outside the cave,” he says instead. “I liked the smell of them.”

“Boring~” Gen sings, but he seems satisfied enough with his answer, and turns to ask Ukyo something along the same lines.

Tsukasa watches them and feels like an outsider. Someone looking in from the other side of the glass. Even though he’s the one who revived them, it feels like a wall stands between them, separating the ones that betrayed him for Senku, and him, the one that Senku was fighting against.

A bloodless conflict, that’s what Ukyo had wanted, that’s what he’s sure Gen also wished for, despite his shallow and uncaring front. He’s the one that was ready to take that from them, the one that thought the cost was worth it, that the ends justified the means. In some ways, he still thinks like that, and he hates himself for it all the more. 

This is why Senku can reach out his hand but can’t pull him closer into his circle, this is why he’s held at arm’s length. His ideals are not in line with everyone else’s, and while that seems to work just fine with guys like Magma and Yo, Tsukasa is different, because he’s the one that previously succeeded in making all these people’s worst fears come true. 

He’s the one that killed Senku.

And even if someday he’s forgiven for it, he knows they will never forget.

\----

There’s a spot near the stern of the ship where Tsukasa likes to retire to when the noise inside the communal areas gets too loud and he can hardly hear his own thoughts over everyone else’s words. He doesn’t hide there often, as he’s not too keen on being far from everyone else while on such a precarious journey, but apparently it’s still often enough for Senku to notice and find him without trouble.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he says, without prompting, leaning back against the foremast that casts a shadow over Tsukasa’s sitting from. 

“I-” Tsukasa tries to say.

“Don’t even try to deny it,” Senku cuts in, mouth set in a hard line. “I can tell when I’m being avoided, what do you take me for?”

Tsukasa looks away, feeling the burn of Senku’s eyes on him like a hot iron against bare skin. “I thought you wanted it-” he bites his lip, confused at the turmoil of emotions clashing inside him and at Senku’s unexpected reaction. “Sorry.”

“You thought I-” Senku shakes his head, eyebrows furrowed. “You thought I wanted you to avoid me? I’d remember saying something like that.”

Tsukasa frowns. “I know I’m not like the others.” He grips his knees tight, the bile in the back of his throat rising further up his mouth. “I tried to- no, I _did_ kill you. I wouldn’t expect you to easily get over such a thing, no matter how much you try to pretend everything is fine.”

Senku looks at him as if he’s speaking another language. “What are you talking about? We’re even now. I thought we’d already talked about this.”

“You ‘killing’ me in order to save me is _not_ the same thing as me actually killing you, Senku. You have to know that.”

Senku sighs, looking up and scratching his head in clear frustration. “Look,” he moves closer and kneels in front of Tsukasa. “Do you want to apologize? Do you need that sort of thing for a blank slate? Because if so then go ahead, I forgave you a long time ago.” He snorts. “I don’t think you realize how long you were on ice for. I’ve had a lot of time to come to terms with whatever you think it is that’s troubling me.”

Tsukasa thinks back to two days ago and the badly disguised fear behind Senku’s eyes as he realized Tsukasa was the one in the room with him. 

“But I’m here now. It’s easier to accept what happened when you don’t have to see me every day.” He grimaces. “Aren’t you even a little bit...afraid?”

Senku blinks at him, surprise etched on his features. “Afraid? Of you?” He lifts his hand to Tsukasa’s cheek and pinches him hard enough to sting. 

“What are you doing?” Tsukasa asks, not moving his face away despite his bemusement. He thought they were having a serious conversation here.

Senku grins and pulls his hand back. “Why would I be afraid of you when I can hurt you and you won’t even try to defend yourself?” 

“That was just a pinch,” Tsukasa says, rubbing his tingling cheek. “That hardly constitutes as hurtin-”

“What I’m trying to say,” Senku grits out, squeezing Tsukasa’s cheeks between his palms to shut him up, “is that I know you won’t hurt me.” He gives a one shoulder shrug and drops his hands to Tsukasa’s forearms. “I trust you, and you’ll have to trust me on this.”

“But in the lab,” Tsukasa argues, despite the undeniable warmth of hope growing in the pit of his stomach. 

“In the lab?”

“You were scared when you saw me. It wasn’t because you weren’t expecting anyone, it was because it was _me_. I could tell that much, I’m not an idiot.”

“What are you talking about?” And Senku sounds genuinely confused, looking up as if trying to place the exact occasion Tsukasa is referring to.

“When I went looking for you because of Ryusui.”

The hands on his forearms move as Senku seems to remember. “Oh, that.” He makes a face. “Really?” Disbelieving. “I just didn’t want you to see what I was doing.”

“Because you don’t trust me and you’re still afraid of-”

“Because I was working on this,” Senku cuts him off, leaning back to pull something out of the small pouch hanging on his belt. “I was going to give it to you tomorrow but I guess it’s fine to do it now.” He extends his hand towards Tsukasa, revealing a medium sized metal hairpin, with blunt edges and a barely visible pattern along its legs. 

Tsukasa stares at it dumbly, too surprised to do anything else. “A kanzashi?” he asks, unsure.

“It doubles as a weapon, actually,” Senku says, pulling on the rounded tips of the metal to show that they’re actually just a cover for the knife sharp blades underneath them. “You might not always be able to fight with just your fists and legs, you know.” He puts back the cover and places the hairpin in Tsukasa’s open palm. “Besides, you’ve got all that hair, it should be good for something now.”

“You were making a kanzashi,” Tsukasa says, trying and failing to realign reality in a way that will make this fit in with his previous assumptions. He traces the pattern on the metal with reverent fingers and feels his breath catch in his throat. “For me.”

“Yes, I thought we’d already established that,” Senku grunts out, and when Tsukasa looks up at him he’s already looking away, the dark flush on his cheeks barely visible under the darkness of the night sky. 

“You’re not afraid of me.”

“No.” 

“You trust me?”

“Yes.”

Tsukasa squeezes the hairpin tight, the cold feeling of the metal against his skin like a balm to his wounds. “Thank you.”

Senku finally turns to face him again. “You’ll wear it?” For some reason, he sounds hesitant, as if there was ever any doubt.

“Of course,” Tsukasa tells him. “Isn’t that why you made it?”

“I won’t force you,” Senku says, scratching his nose. “I just thought I’d make it, you don’t have to wear it if you don’t like it.”

“I like it,” Tsukasa says firmly. He puts the hairpin between his teeth and pulls his hair into a messy half-remembered braid-ponytail hybrid he saw at one point in one of those youtube videos his sister used to watch all the time. He tries to stick in the hairpin in a way that holds his hair together, but it falls apart almost as soon as he lets go, and through the hair that suddenly curtains his face, he can see Senku looking back at him in amusement. 

“The girls will probably know how to do it better,” he says, visibly holding back laughter.

Tsukasa feels his neck heat up and pulls the hairpin out of his hair. “Yes, you’re right.”

His heart trips in his chest as Senku leans forward and parts his hair down the middle. 

“Hello, there.”

He frowns. “Hello.”

“Are we over all the melodrama now?” Senku asks, and his thumb is rubbing softly at the side of Tsukasa’s cheek, sending pinpricks of heat all the way down his body. 

“They were reasonable concerns.”

“Sure,” Senku says, looking like he doesn’t agree. “Next time just believe me when I say everything is fine.” He smirks. “Or are you still doubting that I trust you?”

“No,” Tsukasa admits, resting his free hand on Senku’s wrist. How could he, when Senku had been working on a weapon for him the whole time he’d been beating himself over his past mistakes? 

Senku makes a small noise and says, “Are you okay with one more surprise tonight?”

“One more?” Tsukasa asks. He can’t imagine what else there could be. All his doubts and worries have been put to rest, there’s nothing more he could ask for right now. “What is it?”

Senku looks down at the small space between them and squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. “I,” he says, and when he looks up again his mouth is set in a determined line, eyes blazing. “I want to kiss you.”

“You- what.” Tsukasa pulls back, eyes wide, and then he realizes what his reaction must have looked like and moves back in before Senku’s expression can fall more than a fraction. “Yes.” 

Senku raises his eyebrows. “Yes?”

“You can-” he lets out a shallow breath. “You can kiss me.”

And suddenly he’s presented with the face Senku always gets whenever an experiment succeeds. Bright wide eyes, furrowed brows and that almost unintentional crooked grin. 

_Oh,_ Tsukasa thinks, _so this is what it’s like to be on the other end of the test tube._ And then he doesn’t have any time to think at all, because Senku is surging forward and pressing their lips together into what Tsukasa can only describe as the best thing since - well, everything, really. He digs his fingers into Senku’s wrist, careful to keep the pressure light enough that it won’t bruise, and lets Senku pull his lower lip between his teeth, surprised at the noise that comes out of his throat at the sensation. 

Senku pulls back just far enough to say, “Noisy,” in a breathy voice, before coming back to swallow whatever protests Tsukasa might have had about his comment. 

There’s something hot growing in his chest, twisting his lungs around his spine and lifting his skin off his bones. It’s so bright behind his eyelids, he wants to shield his eyes from it. Is this how kissing normally feels like? 

“I don’t know,” Senku replies, panting against his mouth, and, oh, did he say that out loud?

“You’ve never done this before?” Tsukasa asks, slowly opening his eyes. There’s no brightness waiting to blind him, just Senku and his pretty red bruised lips.

“No,” Senku says, as if it should’ve been obvious. “That’s okay, though. Trial and error and all that.” He grins.

Tsukasa smiles. “Ah, I see.” And doesn’t tell him he thinks the experiment was already a success from the start.

  
  


END.

**Author's Note:**

> well, hope you enjoyed it  
> comments are much appreciated :'DD
> 
> find me at:  
> @wingsoutforshin


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